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What Pizarro and the Inca can Teach Librarians: Why Libraries Should Not Be Part of IT – A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy Swanson

Legend has it that In 1532, Pizarro overthrew the Inca Empire with 168 men. Librarians have much to learn from history.

I have been working my way through Charles Manns’ eye opening and complex book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Mann challenges us to rethink what we know about Native American culture [...]

November 7th, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)

When “Library” Is Not an Action but an Old Building – A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy Swanson

 I have heard reports of the demise of libraries and librarians since I first entered library school over thirteen years ago. I tend to not pay much attention to them, but in the last few months a couple articles followed by personal experiences have caused me a bit of concern. The first was Rick [...]

August 15th, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, Library Jobs, Library Web Sites, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)

Library Management and Entropy: The Information as Management Text –A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy Swanson

Library management is a battle against entropy. Those of us who remember our physics know that entropy is most famously captured in the second law of thermodynamics, but it may be easiest to think of entropy as the measurement of the dissipation of energy in a system. So, if hot water and cold water are [...]

June 27th, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | One comment - (Comments are closed)

Seduced by Google – A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy Swanson

When we initiated a new usability study of our library’s website, we reviewed close to 60 library websites. The one dominant trend  we observed was the placement of some sort of search functionality was present on the library’s homepage. Most libraries had tabbed search boxes that allowed users to click between tabs for searching the [...]

May 25th, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, Library Innovators, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)

Your “Library” Doesn’t Participate in Social Media, But Your People Do – A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy Swanson

Much discussion has been made about librarians reaching out through social media to our communities and our patrons and rightly so. But, we often overlook the role that social media offers for us internally as a means to strengthen our organizations.

One thing to remember is that libraries really do not participate in social networks. [...]

March 23rd, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, Library 2.0/Web 2.0, Social Software & Sites, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)

Policies Don’t Do Work – A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy swanson

Many technology policies are created out of fear. They are created to protect the organization from its own members. They present a laundry list of illegal activities from copyright infringement, to libel, to harassment, to intellectual property theft, etc. They “protect” the library from lawbreakers and heart breakers.

Of course, policies have never done an [...]

March 18th, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, Library 2.0/Web 2.0, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | Comments are closed

The Conundrums of Control and Adaptability – A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy Swanson

Administrators face two conundrums with Web 2.0 tools. David Weinberger called the first a “conundrum of control” in his book Everything is Miscellaneous. This conundrum states that organizational leaders have an important interest in ensuring that 2.0 tools are used to further the organization’s mission. However, the more controls that they put in place (such as [...]

March 11th, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, Library 2.0/Web 2.0, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | One comment - (Comments are closed)

The Underground Economy of Innovation – A TTW Guest Post by Dr. Troy Swanson

There are costs to maintaining and fully supporting technologies. For every dollar of software or hardware that is purchased, there are additional dollars that must be committed to implementation and ongoing support. Most organizations have lists of “supported” technologies and much longer lists of “unsupported” technologies. Yet, we continue to innovate. We continue to utilize [...]

March 5th, 2011 | Category: Librarians, Libraries & the Profession, Library 2.0/Web 2.0, Library Innovators, Social Software & Sites, TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | One comment - (Comments are closed)

Please Welcome Dr. Troy Swanson!

Dr. Troy Swanson has agreed to share with TTW readers a series of four guest posts. I blogged about Troy’s research here: http://tametheweb.com/2011/02/22/interview-with-dr-try-swanson-community-college-blogging-research/

The first post - The Underground Economy of Innovation – will go up today!

Troy A. Swanson is Teaching & Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College, where he teaches information literacy and coordinates [...]

March 5th, 2011 | Category: TTW Contributor Dr. Troy Swanson | Comments are closed
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